Code Execution Vulnerabilities Found in Aspose PDF Processing Product

Several critical remote code execution vulnerabilities have been found by Cisco Talos researchers in a PDF file processing product from Aspose.

Australia-based Aspose provides APIs for manipulating a wide range of file formats, including Word, PDF, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote files. Aspose says on its website that its products are used by over 17,500 customers across 114 countries, including 75 percent of Fortune 100 companies.

Talos researchers discovered that Aspose.PDF, which is designed for manipulating and parsing PDF files, is affected by three vulnerabilities that can be exploited to execute arbitrary code by getting the targeted user to open a specially crafted PDF file with the affected application.

The flaws, tracked as CVE-2019-5042, CVE-2019-5066 and CVE-2019-5067, have been described as use-after-free issues. All of the vulnerabilities have been assigned CVSS scores of over 9, which puts them in the “critical severity” category.

Talos has made public technical details for each of the vulnerabilities.

Two of the flaws were reported to the vendor in late July and one in mid-April and they were all patched this week, according to Talos’ disclosure timeline.

The disclosure of these vulnerabilities comes just weeks after Talos released the details of three other arbitrary code execution flaws affecting a couple of Aspose libraries.

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.